Bethlehem man loses in tax snafu

Bethlehem man can't recoup all overpayments.

Like it or not, Lehigh County will be reassessing your property soon. Taxes are projected to go up for some and down for others.

How much you'll pay depends on several factors, chief among them the size of your home or building. So it's critical that your county tax office knows precisely just how big it is.

Dennis Tilli of Bethlehem learned just how critical. He discovered recently he'd been overpaying his school, city and county property taxes for more than a decade because Northampton County tax records had the wrong measurements for his house.

He'll only be getting a refund for six years of overpayments, though, because that's all the law requires.

Northampton County had the front of his home measured at 48 feet when it really is 36 feet, Tilli said. He discovered the error when his home's assessment was updated late last year after he installed a heat pump. He needed a permit for the work and the city reported the permit to the county, which triggered a reassessment on the improvement to his home.

When Tilli got his updated tax bill, he and his wife measured their house and it didn't match up with their assessment record online.

"It's quite a difference," he said.

It sure is. For tax purposes, his square feet of living area dropped from 2,300 to 1,700. His assessed value dropped from $64,100 to $54,100.

Tilli said the county didn't balk when he pointed out the discrepancy and it immediately corrected his assessment record. He said officials couldn't tell him exactly how long he had been overpaying based on the incorrect measurement, but he said he was told it dates to at least 1999.

Tilli said the county told him he would be getting a refund for overpaying, but only for the past six years because that's what's required. Tilli questions the fairness of that.

"If I owed them money I'm sure they wouldn't go back only six years," Tilli said. "They'd want it all."

Cheryl Johnson, Northampton County's assessment manager, said state law caps refunds for overpayments at six years for clerical or mathematical errors. She said if an error was in the property owner's favor, meaning they had been paying lower taxes than they should have been paying, the county can only adjust the assessment for the current year.

She said Tilli will get a total refund of about $3,800 from the school district, city and county.

The county can't say for sure how the measurement error occurred, Johnson said, but it could have been when a 12-foot-wide deck was calculated into the measurement of the front of the home. The deck is on the side of the house and is flush with the front wall, so I could see that happening.

It's also unclear how long that measurement error was on the books. The county reassessed properties in 1991 and 1995, but neither time did it measure residential properties, Johnson said.

She said errors like what Tilli experienced are not common. She said the county has about 121,000 parcels and finds about 10 to 20 errors a year. Some involve measurements and some involve "methodology" changes, such as classifying a basement or attic as finished or unfinished.

Lehigh County rarely encounters errors because it uses satellite mapping technology and aerial photography to keep assessment records updated, administration director Tom Muller said, adding he couldn't recall an error in the past six years.

The county found itself in hot water under the previous administration, though, when a controller's audit in 2006 revealed the county had unearthed errors on 287 property assessments in 2003 but failed to correct them or issue refunds to 100 property owners who had overpaid.

The errors dated to the reassessment in 1991 and were caused by sloppy data entry. The county corrected the errors and refunded taxpayers after the controller made the cover-up public.

Tilli said this wasn't the first time he ran into a problem with his assessment record. About 15 or 20 years ago, when he appealed his tax assessment, he discovered the lot measurement on his tax record was off, too. He recalled getting a few hundred bucks back that time.

What does this mean for you? Check your assessment records to make sure your home and lot measurements are correct. Northampton and Lehigh county records are available for free online. When measuring your home, Johnson said, make sure to measure the outside perimeter.

Northampton County records are at http://www.ncpub.org and include sketches with building dimensions.

Lehigh County records are at http://www.lehighcounty.org under "services" and "assessment records." The records do not include sketches but do include lot dimensions and square footage of buildings.

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